Wakey Wakey: Sleeping Dogs Gets A Release Date

Share this:

You there! Do you want to know when in the calendar year Square Enix’s open-world police drama Sleeping Dogs will be with us? If not, please disregard the next few lines. Here’s something to distract you while the rest of us discuss the nexus of time and a game about a man running around Hong Kong punching people in the face. For the rest of us, it’s time to talk. Me, you, August 17th, Sleeping Dogs. And to the surprise of nobody, you can pre-order and receive a few special bonuses. One of those is a flying punch. If you want to know more, and want to see eight minutes of footage of the game, just stick £10’000 in my Paypal account and click the pre-order link below. Don’t click it first, as I have no way of denying anyone access. Prove to me the honour system works.

So, yeah: when you pre-order in stores you can get the “George St. Pierre content”, which is a flying punch, more powerful grapples and throwing damage, and an outfit. George is an MMA start who’d been advising the team on their in-game grapples. You’ll also get the “Police Protection content”, which includes a new mission, a SWAT uniform, gun, and car. Anyway, here’s some off-screen footage of the game from PAX. Eight minutes long, but starts with about four minutes of running. The rest is slightly awkward violence.

My attention was rapidly heading down hill with the quicktime event chase but the fight was where I switched off. A “gang fight” where four people stand around while you slam a fifth guys head into an extractor fan. I appreciate the idea of “the player as the hero” but come on, that’s just stupid.

I get the feeling this is going to leave a lot of people somewhat disappointed. I WANT to be excited by it, but there’s something that feels a little ‘off’ about it.

Oh, and it looks like they have the “wait for you to catch up”-type chase sequences, which are inevitably terrible, because there’s nothing interesting about ‘chasing’ someone who’s scripted to be caught at a specific time and place.

Is it just me, or do Eastern devs seem a little…out of touch…with Western gamers and their tastes?

I loved DSIII for the most part. But that multi-stage final boss fight was so blatantly Sqeniz-influenced it wasn’t even funny. Had final fantasy writ large all over it. And was much the worse for the fact.

Because transforming, multiform, ridiculous antagonist climax battles is EXCLUSIVELY a trope used by eastern devs, and not one that western literature, movies, and yes video games, had long beforehand, and continue to exhibit sometimes.

I was actually a little disappointed that the entire game isn’t being rendered in the same style.

Arkham got the “fighting hand to hand with shitloads of bad guys” thing right, can people just start stealing it outright already? Of all the tropes in games that have been copy pasted ad nauseam why is that one left alone?

Yeah doesn’t look as good as it should be which stinks cause I like the setting and concept… The fighting isn’t as bad as AssCreed but could use more aggressive enemies and more fluid animations (although the one jump kick was pretty sweet). It’s a shame, I liked the first True Crime but that was a long time ago. This could get better though if it really opens up and lets you run around and arrest random people like the original :)

This is extremely reminiscent of another game series in which the player deals out punishment with his martial arts. This appears to a Yakuza type of game but set in China from the perspective of the police. Open world games that focus more on martial arts than driving or shooting provide a welcome alternative to Grand Theft Auto games. This is not to say that GTA is not a good series, but sometimes it is nice to take it to the tough guys with fists alone. Hopefully Square Enix can handle a sandbox adventure.